It’s not cricket.

July 6, 2011

When people ask me where I’m from, I say Britain. Then I get that but where are you really from and I say Sri-Lanka because I’m not up for a long discussion on identity and belonging. But then I wish I did because they often start talking about cricket. Sri-Lanka’s cricket team matters. It’s a serious, respected contender in all things cricket-like. I wish I could care but I can’t. I have absolutely no affinity with Sri-Lanka’s cricket team. I don’t care if they lose. I don’t mind if they win either, but I do hope they don’t win at moments when the country’s politics is going through a particularly jingoistic stage.

Every now and then I wish that people who speak so knowledgeably about Sri-Lankan cricket would take just a few minutes to find out what happens in the rest of the country and why I lapse into a strangulated silence when they mention it. Of course they won’t, and to be honest I don’t blame them.

I just wonder sometimes how Norman Tebbit would feel to know that I fail the cricket test on every level possible.